


Thought I'd Never Be

by Nerissa



Category: Republic of Doyle
Genre: Christmas, F/M, Family, Fluff, Gen, Mild Language, Stakeout, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-25
Updated: 2012-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-22 09:02:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/608104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nerissa/pseuds/Nerissa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leslie turns up on the Doyle doorstep on Christmas Eve. She has a favour to ask.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thought I'd Never Be

**Author's Note:**

  * For [in48frames](https://archiveofourown.org/users/in48frames/gifts).



“No, Dad, you’ve got it too far to the—shit, Tinny, duck!”

Tinny ducked. The fragile piece of bone china that decorated the mantel did not. The Christmas tree smacked into it on its headlong dash to the ground, and both smashed into the hearth at the same time.

Only the Christmas tree survived the fall.

“Oh my God.” Tinny straightened, staring at the shattered china. “Oh my God. Wasn’t that like a hundred, or something?”

“Or something.” Malachy was staring, too. “Try a hundred and twenty-five.”

“Well,” said Jake, from where he was acting as tree-raising supervisor, “it’s in about a hundred and twenty-five pieces now, so that seems kinda fitting in a way, don’t it?”

The looks his niece and father turned on him could have peeled paint.

“Okay, just . . . tryin’ to point out a bright side,” he said, holding his palms up in defense. A knock at the door gave him the perfect excuse to say “I’ll get it!” and run from the room before they could start pelting him with fallen ornaments.

He opened the door to a rush of cold air and a pink-cheeked, red-nosed Leslie Bennett.

“Leslie, oh, hi! It—Merry Christmas, by the way—it’s . . . what are you doing here?”

“Charming,” she pronounced. Her mouth tugged up in half a smile to soften the observation. “Can I come in? I’ve kind of got a favour to ask.”

“Oh, sure, sure, that’d be fine,” Jake decided, and stepped aside to admit her. Rose walked into the kitchen just then, carrying a small dustpan full of shattered china. She stopped, surprised, when she saw their guest.

“Hello, Rose,” Leslie looked distinctly less comfortable about entering the house than she’d done moments before. “I’m awful sorry to be pushing in on your Christmas Eve like this—”

“Pushing in?” Rose declaimed, hastily shovelling a hundred and twenty five pieces of one hundred and twenty five year old china into the bin. “No, don’t be silly, you’re welcome! Can I get you something? We’ve got cider on the stove, and I think there’s eggnog too, if Des didn’t—”

“Des did,” said Jake.

“Well. There’s cider.”

“Cider’d be lovely,” Leslie smiled, and at Rose’s urging, stepped through into the living room, where the tree was being levered up off the ground with no small degree of difficulty.

“Hey, Leslie!” Tinny peered out from between the branches. She had the tree in a bear hug as her grandfather raced frantically from one side to the other, trying to get enough picture wire tied on that it would actually stay in one place. “Wanna grab a side? Uncle Jake’s a bit useless when it comes to this.”

“Hey, I am not useless!” Jake defended himself. “I just don’t like getting all sticky. And it pokes a lot.”

“God, ya baby!” Tinny huffed into the branches. Leslie was really grinning now, and stepped up to grab hold of a couple branches.

“Is the stand not doing the job?” she wondered.

“What stand?” Malachy muttered. “It’s a bucket and bricks, just like it was last year. ‘Sure, I’ll get a stand Dad!’ the by says. ‘You don’t need to remind me, I can remember just fine’ and then what do you know? Bucket and bricks. Again!”

“It’s practically tradition,” Tinny confided, leaning out around the tree to join the conversation. “Ever since he backed the car over the last stand four years ago.”

“All right,” said Jake, “all right, it’s straight, that’s it, you’ve got it just perfect. Tie ‘er away there, Dad.”

Malachy did, anchoring the wire to the hooks embedded in the walls as Tinny and Leslie stepped back to watch. This time the tree stayed where it was tied, and when Rose came in with a tray of cider in mugs, she made all the appropriate noises of approbation that convinced Malachy the job had, indeed, been well done.

“But what brings you here tonight, Leslie?” he wanted to know, as everybody (each keeping one wary eye still fixed to the tree) found seats around the room. Leslie took a deep breath, then a sip of her cider, then another deep breath.

“I’ve got a sort of favour to ask,” she said. “It’s a real imposition, it being Christmas Eve I know, but . . . we’ve kind of got to keep an eye on the house across the street.”

“What,” said Tinny, “like, a stakeout?”

“Yes, exactly like. There was a kidnapping in Ontario last week, a non-custodial parent is their only suspect, and  . . . it’s somebody with ties here. His name’s on the deed of that house in particular, so we’ve been asked to sit on the property, so if he does turn up with the kids, we can run him in.”

“Jesus, their mum must be out of her poor mind with worry,” Malachy tsked.

“Sure, Leslie, if you need the place you're welcome to set up here,” Rose nodded. “I don’t guess it’s the sort of night where you can just park a car outside. What are you going to need?”

“Just a clear view of the house,” Leslie assured them.

“No help?” Jake wondered. Leslie looked uncomfortable.

“I’ve already imposed enough,” she said delicately.

“Naw, no imposition!” Jake said. “Is it, hey Dad?”

Malachy, marginally more perceptive than his son, and quite able to see that Leslie would really rather not be relying on Doyles to help her keep watch, cleared his throat and checked his watch.

“You know Jake, by, Santa’s not gonna come if you don’t get to bed at a decent hour.”

“The hell, Dad?” Jake said, confused. Leslie bit back a smile.

Tinny was not so discreet. “He wants you to get your arse to bed and keep your nose outta Leslie’s business,” she said. “Though honest, Leslie,” she added, “I don’t think he’d screw this one up.”

Leslie looked at Tinny, then Jake, then her cider.

“Well,” she said, “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to take it in shifts.”

Even as she said the words, she figured she’d probably have to eat them before dawn.

***

With the main lights shut off and only the tree plugged into the wall, the living room didn’t just sound quieter, it felt it, too.

Jake draped himself across the couch and watched as Leslie took up a position in the chair by the window, shielded from easy view by the Christmas tree. The golden glow of the little white lights played over her where she sat, and Jake, abruptly, looked away.

“So,” he said, and cleared his throat. “Custody case, huh? That’s—that’s a hell of a time to be yanked from your home, eh?”

Leslie murmured her agreement.

“Poor tykes must be scared,” Jake guessed. Leslie nodded, propping her chin up in her hand and continuing to watch the street.

“Their mum must sure be scared too, don’t you—”

“Jake,” Leslie cut in, “it’s okay not to talk.”

“Right,” said Jake, “right, then.” He fell silent, and looked at her once more.

The light from the tree made a sort of halo of her hair. She looked like a Christmas angel, alit from the tree and grown to full size in the chair beside it.

Jake leaped to his feet, leaving the thought in the seat behind him.

“Coffee!” he said. “Who’s for coffee, eh? I’ll make us some coffee, with chocolate peppermint sticks. I think we’ve got some left. That’ll . . . that’ll hit the spot.”

Then he hurried out of the parlour, into the kitchen. It was going to be a long night.

***

Six cups of coffee later, he was regretting that decision. So was Leslie.

“Hurry up, would ya!” she hissed, and rapped on the bathroom door.

“Use the upstairs one!” he hissed back.

“I’m not traipsin’ on up your stairs on Christmas Eve just to—no, I will not use the upstairs one! _You_ use it!”

“Well I can’t hardly now, can I, seeing as I’m using this one! Just, stop talking to me, would you? You’re making it hard for me to concentrate.”

So Leslie skipped back to the living room and sat, legs crossed, until Jake emerged and made an over-elaborate bow, gesturing her toward the door.

“’Bout bloody time,” Leslie muttered, and bounded off the couch.

“Yeah, you’re very welcome!” Jake called after her. Then he took up her position by the window, keeping an eye on the house.

The night was more spent than not, and still there was no sign of a man with two little kids in tow. The house across the road was dark and still, just as it was most months when it didn’t have a tenant. Jake, on thinking it over, couldn’t actually remember having met the owner.

“There,” Leslie reappeared in the doorway, “enough with the coffee.”

“Agreed,” said Jake. He turned back to the window, then looked up to find Leslie standing at the arm of the chair.

“Well?” she said.

“Well?” he replied.

“You’re in my seat.”

“Naw,” he said, “it’s fine, I can take this for a while. You get some rest, or something.”

“Rest? Jake, I just drank five and a half cups of Van Houtte medium roast. I’m not gonna sleep til the New Year. Give me back my chair.”

“ _Your_ chair? Well I beg your pardon, but just whose house is it we’re sitting in right now?”

“Your father’s,” said Leslie. “And I bet you anything you like if we was to go and wake him up right now, he’d tell you to get your arse out of my chair.”

Jake, on reflection, was unwilling to take the bet.

“We could share it,” he suggested.

“Honest to God, Jake, I will kick you in the face.”

He remembered, now, that coffee always gave Leslie a particularly nasty edge.

“That’s just mean,” he protested. “Here, see,” he scooted over to the side, “plenty of room. Come on, Les,” he reached up, caught her hand, and tugged.

“Jake, quit—” she tugged back, he let go, and he hadn’t realised she was going to tug so _hard_ so suddenly she was overbalancing, falling back, and what else could he do but reach up and grab a fistful of her sweater to pull her back to her feet?

Was it his fault that he pulled maybe a little too hard, and she ended up sprawling across his lap? No, it was not.

Well. Not that he’d admit to, anyway. She’d kick him in the face for sure.

“Jake, God, I knew this was a mistake,” she was squirming, trying to find her balance, and suddenly the threat of being kicked in the face wasn’t the most _pressing_ situation he had going on. Blood rushed to his face. And other areas.

“Leslie,” he said, “hang on. Just—Jesus, _please_ would ya hang on a sec?”

Something about the urgency of his tone impressed her, and she looked up, waiting.

Of course, cradling Leslie half across his lap, her looking like a kind of fallen angel with her hair all tousled and her cheeks flushed and the Christmas lights still colouring her all pink and gold . . . yeah, turned out, that wasn’t much better. And her breath was coming awfully fast, too.

“Jake . . .” she said softly. He leaned in.

“Yeah?”

For the longest moment of the night, everything was perfectly still. Then he leaned down just a hair more, his lips hovering over hers . . .

“Shit, Jake, it’s a car!” she went rigid under him, and his head snapped up. Sure enough, a vehicle had just turned onto the street, drawing to a rolling halt in front of the very house they'd been watching. The engine shut off, and both Jake and Leslie leaned forward, squinting out into the snowy, streetlamp-lit street.

A figure bundled well against the cold emerged from the driver’s side. Then he crossed to the back door, opening it to lift out the dead-weight, snowsuit-clad shape of a sleeping child.

“Got him,” Leslie breathed, “that’s got to be him . . . and yes, there he goes, right to the door . . . Jake, you watch to see if he’s got the other kid, but I’m gonna call this in right now.”

She surged up, off his lap, leaving it cold and empty as she ran for the kitchen. Jake watched, focused on the darkened home across the street and, yes, the second little figure that was lifted from the back seat and borne in through the front door.

By then Leslie was back from making her call, flushed with triumph, and beaming down at him in the dim light of the tree.

“It feels _good_ ,” she said, “doesn’t it?”

And Jake had to admit, for various reasons, that yeah it really did.

***

The Doyle house had never seen so much activity on Christmas Day, not even the year that seventeen distant aunts, uncles and cousins had decided to invite themselves over with next to no notice. The coffee pot was kept chugging away as the street filled with police cars and the kitchen filled with policemen, then Doyles (who had decided not even to bother trying to sleep through all of this) then social workers and, finally, two sleepy, confused little kids from Ontario.

By the time the crowds dispersed, giving the Doyle house back to the Doyles, the grey light of winter’s dawn had given way to something steadier. Jake couldn't stop yawning.

“You gonna stay for Christmas Day?” he wondered and Leslie, smiling, shook her head.

“Gonna go home and get some rest. You should too, by.”

“Yeah,” he said, “maybe I will.” He saw her to the door, held it open and everything, but . . . she hesitated.

“You forget something?” he wondered. She smiled and shook her head.

“Just a little,” she said. “Merry Christmas Jake.”

Then she kissed him. Just reached up, put a hand on his cheek, and . . . kissed him. Her lips were light and sweet as snowflakes. He stood, staring, able only to watch as she tucked her hands in the pockets of her coat and headed off down the street.

Still Jake stood there, watching after her until she rounded the corner at the end of the road. Only then did he slowly close the door.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is a line from Stan Rogers's fabulous song "At Last I'm Ready for Christmas." It gives me lots of Doyle feels!
> 
> Dear recipient, I hope you enjoyed! I ship these two so much and I can't wait to see them get back together for real, but in the meantime I hope this puts a smile on your face. Happy Yuletide!


End file.
